Dear Paulbots: You don’t matter

It is time for the Ron Paul supporters to go to sleep. It is past their bedtime. Their 15 minutes are up.

A week ago it was pointed out that CPAC was overrun by a fringe element with loud voices and goofy hair known as Paulbots.

Like every other incomprehensible Paul from John Paul to Sean Paul to Rupaul, Ron Paul and his supporters make sense only to themselves.

Before this “movement” gets even more out of hand and these young kids start biting people, it is absolutely necessary to deliver a clear stern message to the Ron Paul supporters.

Listen closely.

You don’t matter. You are a useless, irrelevant fringe group that preaches to the converts and persuades nobody else.

This is where the Paulbots rip off their tinfoil hats in anger and start sending misspelled hate mail to anybody daring to criticize their king of the land of Quirkistan.

Rather than listen to the rabble, it is important to explain to them why they don’t matter.

Then they will have the choice of taking steps to become a real force or remaining a curiosity.

Despite Ron Paul not winning a single primary in 2008, his supporters were loud and obnoxious. If votes were determined by disruptions at events, they would be in charge.

Since actual votes are the determinant, Ron Paul has won nothing outside of his own congressional district. This makes him as representative of America as the Pelosiraptor.

The Paulbots brag about how they have “taken back” the Republican Party. They said the same thing in 2008.

Think of Ron Paul as alternative music. Alternative musicians often turn their noses up at popular music. They say ludicrous things like “We want a small following. Most people don’t understand us.” I am sure a group with six fans with nose rings and blue hair is thrilled that they do not have six million fans.

Ron Paul supporters won 30% of the hard-core activists at CPAC. Of the 11,000 attendees, many did not vote. So let’s not pretend that the 3,000 or so Paulbots represent a large slice of the 60 million people who voted for George W. Bush in 2004.

Being a fringe candidate is not a death sentence. Pat Buchanan was the precursor to the Paulbots, with his “Buchanan Brigades.” He ran a strong protest vote in 1992 (despite winning nothing) and did actually win the 1996 New Hampshire Primary. Yet he won nothing else, and by 2000 was pulling in less than 1% of the national vote. That is not a movement. That is an asterisk.

The last serious movement candidate was Ross Perot in 1992. Despite not winning a single state in the general election, he did garner 19% of the vote. That is a serious candidacy.

Ron Paul supporters preach about what Ron Paul stands for and the Republican Party has consistently rejected it.

On economics Dr. Paul often makes sense. Yet the Republican Party has many serious political thinkers on economics, with the most prominent being Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan.

Where Dr. Paul veers off the reservation is with his isolationist foreign policy. Isolationism does not make him crazy, but it does make him outside the GOP mainstream. The 1950s was the last time that the isolationists comprised a serious wing of the GOP.

Dr. Paul’s foreign policy views are more at home with the far left wing of the Democratic Party in the same way that Senator Joseph Lieberman represents a hawkish interventionist viewpoint no longer allowed in the Democratic Party. Many of Dr. Paul’s supporters are anti-war protesters that have zero interest in any other issue.

Not all of Dr. Paul’s supporters are lunatics, but Dr. Paul refuses to weed out the worst elements in the way William Buckley did with the GOP in the 1950s.

Abolishing the Federal Reserve may sound good, but railing about financial conspiracy theories does not come across as normal.

While Dr. Paul is not an anti-Semite, too many of his supporters are too willing to attack “Neocons,” “bankers,” and “moneylenders.” Attacking Paul Wolfowitz and the IMF is another approach. Claiming that America is a pawn of Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is just another contemptible form of anti-Semitism disguised as isolationism.

Code Pink does it on the left, which is where many of these Paulbots really are.

Ronald Reagan was an interventionist, as was every serious GOP presidential contender since then. The isolationists have every right to hold a different viewpoint, but they are totally wrong in claiming that their view is the Republican mainstream.

So rather than light up message boards that nobody reads or send hate mail that gets discarded, the Paulbots need to decide if they are more interested in garnering attention for themselves or in having serious discussions and building a movement that goes beyond the fringes.

The moment Ron Paul wins a single primary; he will have earned some credibility. If he loses the nomination the Paulbots will claim that “forces” aligned against them to keep Dr. Paul from winning. Those forces are the voters, and most GOP voters do not want Ron Paul or isolationism to be the dominant force in the GOP.

Ron Paul until then is a gadfly in the great tradition of Pat Paulsen and Lyndon Larouche. He draws in groups such as “hookers for Ron Paul” and “bong hits for Ron Paul.” Until proven otherwise, he is not a serious candidate.

The Paulbots can yell and scream as loudly as the hard leftists, but at least the hard left (unfortunately) represents the mainstream of the Democratic Party. Unlike the Democrats, the GOP so far has successfully kept their fringe groups on the margins where they belong.

So the Paulbots can win straw polls and yell at cars in the parking lot, but that will not make them mainstream. Winning an election will.

Until then Paulbots, it needs to be said over and over until you stop talking to each other and start listening to the other 95% of the GOP wanting you to become normal.

Paulbots, get it through your heads.

You don’t matter.

Brooklyn born, Long Island raised and now living in Los Angeles, Eric Golub is a politically conservative columnist, blogger, author, public speaker, satirist and comedian. Read more from Eric at his TYGRRRR EXPRESS blog. Eric is the author of the book trilogy “Ideological Bigotry, “Ideological Violence,” and “Ideological Idiocy.” Eric is 100% alcohol, tobacco, drug, and liberalism free. After years of dating liberals, he has finally seen the light and now only dates Republican Jewish women. His family is pleased over this. Republican, Jewish women, you may contact Eric above.

Read more of Eric’s work at The Tygrrrr Express at the Communities at the Washington Times.

Brooklyn born, Long Island raised and now living in Los Angeles, Eric Golub is a politically conservative columnist, blogger, author, public speaker, satirist and comedian. Read more from Eric at his TYGRRRR EXPRESS blog. Eric is the author of the book trilogy “Ideological Bigotry, “Ideological Violence,” and “Ideological Idiocy.”